About Your Mother
by Starshocked
Summary: Some home truths from Doctor House. HouseCameron. One shot. Reviews welcome.


**Disclaimer: House and all associated characters are the property of Fox.**

About your mother.

Your mother has one of these stupid things. Memory boxes. Made for artificial snobs with artificial souls. That's what I'm telling her. I'd appreciate it if you could tell her too. At least pretend. Ok, God damn it, lie.

I'll be talking to you about lying one day. You'll probably be coming home late, knocking back the breath mints and hoping I can't smell the spirits you consumed in the back of Johnny's car. But I can, I am the all seeing eye. You'll have realised this so you'll sneak in and maybe climb up the tree next to your window and prise open the window and slide through and get into your bed in the dark and think that you've got away with it.

I, of course, will be standing in your bedroom door, resting on my cane and wondering what major thing I did to screw you up so badly.

And I'll be pretty angry and tell you that you shouldn't lie (that's a lie) and that I never consumed alcohol when I was 15 (a lie also) but I won't tell you that everybody lies because I want you to at least be able to believe in dreams and hope and make-believe. Basically, how your mother was before she met me.

Anyway, back to the beginning.

You're this perfect thing. This tiny little thing that fits into the crook of my arm and looks up at me like I've already got everything wrong.

Wrong things can sometimes work out fine though. Two wrong things happened to me. Should I tell you? Ok, I'm pretending that you're reading this and you're sixteen or seventeen at least. You'll know about the birds and the bees. And if you don't, then why the hell not? We pay out all that money for you to attend the best school in the area for you to screw up on the very basics of biology.

Now, you're sat here and you're going "Ewww" and cringing. And you're like: "Dad, shut up!" No wait, your education, that a quarter of my salary pays for, has made you polite beyond belief and you call me "Father" not "Dad".

But then again, you are my daughter so as long as you don't refer to me as "that asshole with the cane who makes mom cry" I'll be happy.

Anyway, don't put this letter down. It gets better. No more nasty moments. I promise.

Something else you should know: when I say _I promise_ I do mean it. I deliver. It might not be how you imagined it was going to be. But the end product is the same.

Am I making sense? Ok, example: Yesterday I was in the kitchen and you were crying for your bear but your bear was in the laundry so I drew eyes on an oven mitt and bingo! Your face lit up. I shall be using this anecdote regularly for the next 18 years whenever life doesn't turn out how you'd like it to. So please, humor me here and stop rolling your eyes.

I know that you'll roll your eyes because it's genetic. I also know that you'll bat your eyelashes and pout when you don't get what you want. Hopefully, I will be losing my sight by the time you're needing your own credit account and your mother can deal with this.

So back on track. The two wrong things that happened to me:

(At this juncture I'd like to add that you're probably thinking: "He's going to talk about when he died. Twice." Well, no! Smart ass! No, I'm not. You might be academically brilliant one day but as I write this you can't even support your own head. To assume is to make an ass of you and me, dumb baby. )

Firstly, I hired your mother. I shouldn't have. I didn't really have any grounds to do so apart from the fact that she wore a tank top well. And she had pretty hair. And sometimes her lips curled into a smile when she handed me a coffee. Oh yeah, she made good coffee. I guess that's what swung it. If she tells you we had this amazing connection or that our eyes mirrored our yearning souls tell her she's talking crap. This isn't us she's talking about. This is an episode of Moonlighting she's remembered from the 1980s. If she tells you that she married a guy called Walter to make me jealous, ditto. There was, however, a guy called Chase but that's a different story completely…

So yes, the wrong part was hiring her. Maybe, amongst the other brilliant immunologists that applied I could have found one that wouldn't try to decorate the office every holiday (you'd understand what I mean if you could see the paper chains she's made for Diwali this year) and insisted on making balanced arguments just to piss me off.

Of course, it wasn't enough that I'd made the mistake of hiring her. I also made the mistake of falling in love with her. That wasn't the bad bit. The bad bit was the hiring, the love bit was absolutely fantastic – of course, when you're 25+ you will experience the delights of love for the first time. Until then, you'll be stuck watching Moonlighting with your mother.

Second wrong thing that happened was she made me buy a dog. No, wait, that hasn't happened yet. But by the time you read this you'll be lying next to some ageing mutt that I have to walk in the rain and snow (hello? I'm an ageing cripple here) because you're girls and you can't go out on these dark cold mornings when you haven't washed your hair or had a chance to apply polish to your nails. Hm.

Really, the second wrong thing was when your mother forgot to take the pill. How strange that one little pill can change your whole life. It was time to get serious and grow up. For your mother. For me it was just an excuse to buy you some really cool Rolling Stones baby-grows and a pink Nintendo DS.

I digress. Actually, let me consider this for a moment. _Your mother _forgot to take the pill. Therefore, this is actually your mother's wrong. We have one each. I must mention this to her. She'll be so pissed.

So, two wrongs make a right. You.

So yeah, you really nailed it when it comes to parents. You get her: so sweet that Cotton Candy develops diabetes when it's within two feet of her. And you get me: miserable son of a bitch. Congratulations.

There'll never be a brother or a sister because basically there was never supposed to be a you. Don't take this the wrong way but I'm an old man, I deserve sleep and rest and a vintage bottle of scotch occasionally. Stinking diapers and baby massage classes were never part of my retirement plan

Somehow we're making it work though. Perhaps we won't. Perhaps it will end tomorrow. Maybe your mother will come to her senses and kick me out. Maybe by the time you read this I'm recreating The Odd Couple (n.b. very old film – ask Lisa Cuddy) with Wilson in some dilapidated apartment in Florida. And you come to see us and bring us newspapers and tinned corn and take the mutt (that your mother made me buy) for a walk because I need a walking frame to get around.

I don't know. I don't know how things will work out. I didn't know that Allison Cameron would make my heart flip in my chest whenever she brushed past me, I didn't know that I'd end up proposing to her in Paris on New Years Eve. And I especially didn't know that you'd have the bluest eyes I'd ever seen.

Yes. We got this part right. Genes somehow blended together to create you and you're pretty amazing. I don't know how it happened and to be honest I don't want to look too closely into it in case the hospital admits to negligence and we discover that our happy and peaceful baby actually belongs to someone else and we have to exchange you for the one in the next crib: the fat ugly kid who won't stop screaming.

What happens next is up to you. I wanted to be an astronaut or at least lead guitar in a million-selling rock band. Your mother wanted to be a vet. I know what you're thinking: "Gee mom, couldn't you have had realistic ambitions."

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is life never turns out how you want it to, or how you predict it to, so I'll shut up now.

I never thought I'd be a dad. Didn't know I wanted to be one.

And now you're lying here. Fast asleep. Sprawled across my bad thigh. I'll forgive you this once because you're only two days old. And quite frankly, you're pretty damn cute.

Yours,

Gregory House, MD


End file.
